Armament officials plan to destroy about 1,000 homemade firearms today,
highlighting the black market in the illegal production of guns.

A proposed new firearms and explosives law forbids firearm production
in Costa Rica, legal or otherwise. But making an illegal gun is cheap,
and technology will make such activities easier.

The destruction of the weapons today will be one of those
made-for-television events at the Dirección General de
Armamento in San Antonio de Coronado. Representatives of the
Organization of American States will be there, as will court officials.

Homemade guns have not been a big issue among adults because
factory-made weapons are so available even for illegal purposes.

The proposed weapons law, No. 18.050, that is in the last stages of
approval in the Legislature prohibits anyone under 18 from having a
firearm and prohibits anyone younger than 15 from even firing one.

Yet any youngster who wants a gun can easily find instructions on
YouTube or other Internet resources. The homemade weapons range from a
couple of pieces of tubing to sophisticated semi-automatic devices. The
investment can be as low as $7, according to some YouTube videos. Some
even use a rubber band as a firing mechanism.

Cheap, homemade weapons are not new. The famous British Sten machine
gun of World War II fame was designed to be manufactured with low
technology in anticipation of a German invasion of the island.

But there is a new wrinkle. The problem of making homemade guns with
3-D printers has become a matter of public concern, according to
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Laws mean little if a determined criminal or a hobbyist teen wants to
make plastic guns or extra-high capacity magazines, says Hod Lipson, a
professor of engineering there and a pioneer in 3-D printing. He added
in a university release:

“With a homemade 3-D printer, you can print a gun using ABS plastic,
the same material that LEGOS are made out of. You can even use nylon,
and that’s pretty tough,” he says. “You won’t be able to make a sniper
rifle with a 3-D printer and it won’t shoot 10 rounds a second, but the
gun you can make could be dangerous. And a high-capacity magazine is
nothing more than a strong plastic box with a spring. It’s trivial to
print.”

A random video from YouTube shows the
construction of a fairly sophisticated handgun.

There are templates available on the Internet for gun parts.

Costa Rica's proposed weapons law, indeed, most countries' weapons
laws, are based on marking and identifying firearms. There even is a
network, eTrace, that tracks weapons by serial number. The United
States
allows hobbyists to build and register their own firearm, but assesses
a $200 fee.

The proposed Costa Rican law has no such provision allowing home
construction. Even repair shops would be licensed. In fact, except for
sportsmen, the law restricts an individual to just one pistol or
revolver. Also prohibited is reloading spent shells, knives with blades
longer than about 4.75 inches and self-protection sprays of more than
30 grams content, Also prohibited are toys that look like real guns.
Air guns delivering a BB bigger than 5.5 millimeters are treated as
firearms. The typical Daisy BB is 4.5 millimeters.

The Internet also contains information on converting some toy guns to a
firearm.

Penalties in the law range from 6 months to eight years. A citizen has
an affirmative responsibility to report violations under penalty of
prison.

Some who have testified at the legislature about the weapons bill
expressed concern that the tight restrictions might stimulate black
market deals.

As has been the case, only expats with permanent residency without
condition can obtain the right to carry a weapon. And expats in the bar
business will find out that the proposed law requires them to maintain
a secure storage area for weapons of customers. Carrying a weapon in a
bar or at a mass demonstration and some other locations is prohibited.

The proposed law also prohibits target shooting at informal ranges. A
registered and licensed range must be used, it says.

The contents of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.
2013 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission.
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details

A.M. Costa Rica's
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Election officials in Venezuela say acting President Nicolas Maduro has
won the special election to succeed his late predecessor, Hugo
Chávez.

The national election authority announced late Sunday that Maduro had
narrowly defeated opposition leader Henrique Capriles, winning just 50
percent of all votes cast to Capriles' 49 percent.

Venezuelans gathered in the streets of the capital of Caracas to
celebrate the election of Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor. The
50-year-old former bus driver and foreign minister began the campaign
with a double-digit lead in the polls over Capriles, a 40-year-old
state governor who lost decisively to Chávez in last year's
presidential election.

But Maduro's lead shrank considerably in the lead-up to Sunday's
vote. Capriles accused Maduro and the Chávez government of
doing little to solve Venezuela's economic problems, food shortages and
soaring crime rate.

Maduro has pledged to continue what he calls the Chávez
revolution, which supporters say used oil wealth to lift millions out
of poverty.

Chávez died last month after a two-year battle with cancer.

He was a staunch socialist who was first elected president in 1998. He
earned the enmity of the United States and others for such policies as
nationalizing major companies and courting world leaders like Cuba's
Fidel Castro, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

The opposition accused him of becoming a dictator, but he was revered
by many of Venezuela's poor.

Early election day the voting lines were shorter than expected in some
parts of Caracas. Maduro was counting on a high turnout by the
poor to continue the Socialist Party's rule in Venezuela.

Maduro has cast himself as his mentor's son during the campaign, and
has promised to continue oil-funded policies that cut poverty from 50
to 29 percent with popular health, education and food programs.

Maria Ortega said she voted for Maduro because that is what President
Chávez wanted.

She said Venezuelans have a lot of faith and confidence in
Maduro, and if Chávez put him there it was for a reason.
She adds he did it with all his heart and voters must go with their
hearts to support the legacy of Hugo Chávez.

Many voters say they were frustrated with the stagnant economy, the
double-digit inflation, chronic power outages, and shortages of food
and medicine. The soaring crime rate is also a major issue for
voters. Venezuela has among the world's highest homicide and
kidnapping rates.

Capriles supporter Joselyn Fernández said she was thinking about
her young niece when she voted.

She said she does not want her to live in a dictatorship, she is just
starting life. Ms. Fernández said she wants her niece to
live and have a good life, so that she can go out on the street with a
sense of security and get a good education.

The opposition has complained that Maduro has used the state
bureaucracy of nearly 2.7-million workers and government-owned media to
unfairly support his campaign. But the voting process in
Venezuela is generally considered fair and impartial.

Election official Juan Martínez said witnesses or observers from
each party are on hand at polling stations to make sure there is no
voter fraud.

He said the observers were looking to see that voters show the official
identification and that it is not a copy or some other paper.

Nearly 19 million people including Venezuelans in Costa Rica were
eligible to vote.

Road construction delay
not enough for protesters

By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff

The central government has backed down on a highway concession after
protesters dominated the Juan Santamaría day festivities in
Alajuela.

Casa Presidencial said late Friday that after a meeting with mayors of
the affected cantons, the order to start construction would be delayed.

This is the San José-San Ramón highway where a 2,000
colons toll, about $4, has been predicted. The concession was won by a
Brazilian firm, OAS. Those who would use the highway say that it is too
much. The toll would be $8 for a trip from San Ramón to San
José and return.

Opponents of the concession said over the weekend that they would
continue their efforts to have the concession rescinded. They have been
meeting to plan additional actions to bring their message to the
government.

The central government issues concessions to private firms because it
does not have the money for capital projects, despite heavy taxes on
vehicle imports and on gasoline and diesel. In exchange for building
the road, the contracting firm gets to collect a toll for a specific
period of years.

San Ramón book sale
promised to be the biggest

Special
to A.M. Costa Rica

The Gran Venta de Libros, Costa Rica’s largest used book sale, is back
and is bigger than ever. The third annual event will be more than
just a used book sale; it will be a celebration of reading with
additional activities scheduled including workshops for children and
teachers, and storytelling, The Community Action Alliance
will once again produce this event at the Universidad de Costa Rica
regional museum in San Ramón Saturday, April 27, from 9 a.m. to
4 p.m.

Last year’s event featured over 7,000 used books, CDs, DVDs, magazines
and other educational materials, more than half of which were in
Spanish. Nearly 1,600 people attended from throughout the
country. The proceeds from the 2012 event benefited the regional museum
and the Hogar Para Ancianos de San Ramón. The
beneficiaries for the 2013 event will be the museum and Escuela Jorge
Washington. Prices for paperback books will be 1,000 colons.
Hard-bound books start at 2,000 colons.

In addition to the new activities, this year’s book sale will help pay
for the installation of a 5 kw solar panel electrical system on Escuela
Jorge Washington, named after the first president of the United
States. The project is being pursued in support of the efforts of
the Fundación San Ramón Carbono Neutral to have San
Ramón become the first carbon neutral canton in Costa
Rica. The Carbon Neutral Foundation and the Municipalidad de San
Ramón are partners in this project. It is believed that
Escuela Jorge Washington will be one of the first public schools in
Costa Rica to install a solar panel system which is projected to reduce
the school’s electrical consumption up to 50 percent and save the
school up to $100,000 over the life of the system.

To ensure that the sale is successful, the Community Action Alliance is
requesting donations of used books and other educational
materials. Drop off locations have been set up in over 10
locations in San Ramón including the following: the
Municipality, the Cruz Roja, the Centro Cultural José Figueres,
Café Aromas, and the Regional Museum. Books can also be
dropped in the Central Valley at any of the three locations for the
Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano, or at AGECO.
Individuals or institutions with large donations can contact Sergio Di
Giancinto to arrange pick up of books at 8680-7914.

More information on the Community Action Alliance and the Book Sale can
be found at www.actionalliancecr.com.

Our reader's
opinion

Vietnam vet is unhappy
with portrayal in column

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

I don’t know your reason to have such a low opinion of former
military. When I returned home from Vietnam, I didn’t
experience the humiliation of being spat upon as I entered the
terminal, but the disgust that I felt as I read of this happening to my
fellow servicemen was overwhelming. I haven’t felt that emotion
in a long time, until I read the column in
today’s A.M. Costa Rica.

“There has been a new group of expats coming to Costa Rica. Many may be
former military who are in possession of guns,” according to Ms.
Stuart. As a member of the American Legion, I would like to know
where these former military members are located so they can attend our
meetings. Are we talking about the former military being in
possession of guns? I don’t know what information this is based
upon, but of the number of expats who own guns, the former military,
are the ones who are probably the ones who are most knowledgeable in
the safe use of firearms. “guns don’t kill people, people kill
people.” You are absolutely right in that!

According to Ms. Stuart, “some of these very people with guns, who
probably could be called “rightists” to balance the teeter totter of
political equilibrium, are also what are called 'peppers' or
survivalists, who have built bunkers and collected provisions and
artillery in the peaceful hills and mountains of Costa Rica” Again, I
don’t know where you are getting your information. I have no
knowledge of former U.S. military, in Costa Rica, having bunkers in the
peaceful hills and mountains but if there are any and they aren’t
bothering anyone, why should anyone care?

Most of the veterans, “that is the proper term for those who have
fought in wars and conflicts for the United States of America,”
that I know are people with children and grandchildren, and all they
want is peace so that their loved ones won’t have to experience the
sights, sounds, and sorrows of battle.

Your use of that wide brush to portray veterans in a bad light is
personally repulsive. I don’t have to agree with what you believe and
print, but many of my brothers and sisters have defended your right to
your opinion, to their death.

Tom
Branham
San Jose

Find out what the papers
said today in Spanish

By the A.M. Costa Rica
staff

Here is the section where
you can scan short summaries from the Spanish-language press. If you
want to know more, just click on a link and you will see and longer
summary and have the opportunity to read the entire news story on the
page of the Spanish-language newspaper but translated into English.

Translations may be a bit rough, but software is improving every day.

When you see the Summary in English of news stories not covered today
by A.M. Costa Rica, you will have a chance to comment.

This is a new service of
A.M. Costa Rica called Costa Rica Report. Editor is Daniel Woodall, and
you can contact him

The contents of this page and this
Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013
and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and
fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details

A.M. Costa Rica
Third News Page

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Here
are some of the photos that the Museo Nacional said will be in the
exhibit.

Museum honors tropical studies
organization for its 50 years

By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff

The Organization for Tropical Studies, which runs three research
centers in Costa Rica, is celebrating 50 years.

The Museo Nacional has created a photo exhibit to honor the
organization.

There are 52 different works, including four sculptures. Photographers
are Juan José Pucci, Giuseppe Tarnero, Karla Kruse and Carlos de
la Rosa, said the museum, adding that the sculptures are by Jonathan
Torres.

Naturally the photos are of outdoors Costa Rica, and they cover

most of the country from the dry
northwest to the Parque la Amistad in southeastern Costa Rica.

The organization will be having its annual meeting June 23 to 27 at the
Ramada Herradura Convention Center.

The non-profit organization operates the La Selva Biological Station at
the northern end of the Parque Nacional Braulio Carrillo. The Palo
Verde Biological Station is in Parque Nacional Palo Verde in
Guanacaste. The Las Cruces Biological Station and the Wilson Botanical
Garden are in the south.

The organization provides both undergraduate and graduate academic
courses.

Taxing court filings considered to raise
money for judiciary

By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff

A large U.S. law firm has a slogan: How much justice can you afford?

That also might be appropriate for the Poder Judicial here which might
be the beneficiary of yet another new tax. This time the tax would be
levied on those going to court to collect money on a debt.

The nation has a new, faster law on collecting money, and such cases
have more than doubled over the last few years. The staff at the
Asamblea Legislativa said that there were 856,685 such cases in 2011.

The new tax would be half a percent on the amount claimed in the
initial filing. So if a bank sought to collect a debt for

$50,000, the bank's lawyers would
have to pay the colon equivalent of $250 up front. Of course,
there is no guarantee that the bank would prevail in the subsequent
hearings.

The legislative staff estimated that the tax would have brought in
about $8 million in 2010 and about $7.3 million in 2011.

The proposal, No. 17.526, for the tax had been dormant since 2009 when
the measure first was put in the legislative hopper. But now there are
active hearings before the Comisión Permanente de Asuntos
Jurídicos.

The Poder Judicial would use the proceeds to improve services and
training, according to a summary.

Testifying last week was Luis Ortiz Zamora, adviser to the
Cámara de Bancos e Instituciones Financieras de Costa Rica.

Key highway in north San José to
be open fully this morning, transport officials say

By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Road officials said that the stretch from the La República
intersection in north San Jose to the Río Virilla would be open
fully to traffic this morning at 5:30 o'clock.

Passage on the main highway had been limited because of the

work removing exiting concrete and
putting down asphalt. This is the main highway to the north and to the
Caribbean coast. The work has been a major inconvenience to motorists.

Top officials including Pedro Castro, minister of Obras Pública
y Transportes, were expected to be at the highway for the opening.

The contents of this page and this
Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013
and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and
fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details

The Río Tibás in Heredia is cleaner today because
students and residents took to the waterway in yet another effort to
keep it clean.

Participating were teachers and students from the Colegio Yurusti and
members of the Comité Bandera Azul Ecológica de San
Miguel de Santo Domingo

This was the third and last cleanup. In three efforts, some 30 bags of
plastic material and other items have been removed from the river. The
weekend efforts have been going on since March, said committee members.
This week there were 10 bags collected for recycling. Rainy weather
will raise the level of the river making further cleanups this year
impossible, said the organization.

The river flows into Santa Domingo from San Isidro de Heredia y San
Rafael de Heredia where there also are organizations protecting it.

The Comité Bandera Azul Ecológica issued a plea for
residents to avoid using the river as a dump. The members also said
that those with property near the river should take care that material
does not get washed or otherwise enter the river.

Comité Bandera Azul Ecológica
de San Miguel photo

Colegio Yurusti do not hesitate
to get wet while they collect trash.

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There's still time to slow the rising of sea levels around the world,
according to a new report from climate scientists, and their strategy
does not focus on carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide building up in the atmosphere and trapping solar heat
over the past century is widely blamed for today's melting glaciers,
shrinking ice sheets and rising ocean waters. But other heat-trapping
pollutants have a more short-term impact, and the researchers say
cutting those emissions could be a more effective way to slow the rate
of climate warming and reduce sea-level rise.

They identify methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons and black
carbon as pollutants that could be targeted with technologies that
already exist to drastically cut their release. Quickly implementing
that strategy could offset warming temperatures by up to 50 percent by
2050, and reduce sea level rise by 22 to 42 percent by the end of the
century, the researchers said. Delaying emission cuts would reduce the
beneficial impact.

In their report, published in Nature Climate Change, the researchers
stress that carbon dioxide is still the most important factor in sea
level rise over the long term. But co-author Warren Washington of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research notes that "we can make a real
difference in the next several decades by reducing other emissions."

Spanish protesters march
seeking end to monarchy

By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services

Thousands of Spanish protesters marched through the streets of the
capital, Madrid, to demand the abdication of the monarchy and the
return to a democratically-elected government.

Sunday's protest marked the anniversary of the country's last
democratically-elected republic, which was overthrown by an army
uprising, followed by a civil war and nearly four decades of
dictatorship under Gen. Francisco Franco.

King Juan Carlos took over as head of state following Franco's death in
1975 and is credited with steering the country towards a constitutional
democracy.

The royal family has come under intense criticism following a series of
recent scandals, including last year's controversial elephant hunting
trip by the 75-year-old king and a corruption investigation involving
his daughter, Princess Christina.

Speedy evolution reported
in a controlled experiment

By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services

A new study challenges the widely held belief that evolutionary changes
in living organisms take place slowly, over hundreds, thousands or
millions of years.

Researchers have found evidence species can evolve much more quickly
when in response to environmental change.

Tim Benton studies how living organisms respond to changes in their
environment. In a paper published in Ecology Letters, the professor of
biological sciences at the University of Leeds in England examines why
marine species, for example, have declined so rapidly in size and
number over the past 50 years.

“Is this a response that is due to them having less food or the
temperature of the water changing from climate change or is it a
response that is due to natural selection working and evolutionary
biology happening?” Benton said.

To find out, Benton’s team of researchers conducted a series of
laboratory experiments with soil mites, tiny spider-like creatures
that, among other things, reproduce rapidly.

“We brought them in from the wild and put them in test tubes, where
each test tube maintained about 1,000 individuals in a free running
population. Every day, we just put in a little bit of food," he said.
"And in some of the populations we took out juveniles and in other
populations we harvested adults. And then we just left them to it over
about 100 weeks.”

That’s normally long enough for about 20 generations of soil mites. In
their new test tube environments, the tiny creatures competed for food,
sex and survival in different ways than they would have in the wild.
And in charting the mites’ growth rates, genetics and reproduction over
this relatively brief span of time, the scientists observed that
natural selection produced significant evolutionary changes. For
example, Benton said, the length of time the mites needed to reach
adulthood doubled during the course of the experiment.

“Because it is taking them so much longer to grow up, then that means
that the population responds to changes in a different way," he said.
"Population growth rate is slower, which means that there are very
large changes in population dynamics, the way the population size
responds to environmental change in itself.”

According to Benton, the mite study suggests there is a powerful
interplay between environmental and evolutionary change.

“And one or two more complementary studies like ours in different
groups, then people will quite happily accept, I think, the force of
evolutionary change in ecological time," he said. "So over a single
human life time, 100 years, there are likely to be very large changes
and if we don’t start thinking about the evolutionary changes as well
as the changes in the environment then the things we put in place to
protect the species we want to manage won’t actually work.”

One place where this might have a critical impact is in fisheries
management.

"Given that we are harvesting large animals all the time, that’s what
we do when we go out fishing," he said. "The phenotypic response that
we see in the reduction of size is likely to be an evolutionary
response and that’s what we found in our laboratory study. So what that
means is, if you stop fishing because your stock is getting depleted
and the animals are increasingly smaller and smaller and smaller, there
is no necessity that they will be able to recover because you’ve had a
hard-wired evolutionary change. So they won’t just be able to spring
back.”

There’s no guarantee that they will again grow larger and larger.

Benton added that environmentally-induced evolutionary changes could
also have serious implications for other wildlife conservation efforts,
as well as for disease and pest control programs.

Comedian Jonathan Winters
left modern stand-up legacy

By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services

Comedian Jonathan Winters, whose manic improvisational genius never
seemed to take a rest, has died at the age of 87 after a more than
50-year career in stand-up, on television and in film.

The burly, moon-faced Winters, a major influence on contemporary
comedians like Robin Williams and Steve Martin, died Thursday of
natural causes at his Montecito, California, home, surrounded by
family and friends, said long-time family friend Joe Petro III.

Winters had standout roles in 1960s comedy films "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad,
Mad World" and "The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming."

He also made regular appearances on "The Tonight Show" with hosts Jack
Paar and then Johnny Carson, and had his own TV shows "The Jonathan
Winters Show" and "The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters" in the late
1960s and early 1970s.

Winters' outlandish riffing style and repertoire of madcap characters
made him a leading stand-up performer in the late 1950s but the
pressure of being on the road led to a mental breakdown in 1959. He
spent time in mental hospitals and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Winters was a comedian who rebelled against telling jokes and
entertained in a stream-of-consciousness style that could veer into the
surreal.

"Most of us see things three-dimensionally," Robert Morse, who starred
with Winters in the 1965 movie "The Loved One," once told The New York
Times. "I think Jonny sees things 59-dimensionally. Give me a hairbrush
and I see a hairbrush. Give Jonny a hairbrush and it will be a dozen
funny things."

Steve Martin said on Twitter Friday: "Goodbye, Jonathan Winters. You
were not only one of the greats, but one of the great greats."

His characters included Maudie Frickert, the salty old lady with a
razor for a tongue, and Elwood P. Suggins, the drawling overall-clad
hick who "was fire chief a while back until they found out who was
setting the fires."

Winters joined the U.S. Marine Corps at 17 and fought in the Pacific
during World War II. After the war he returned to his native Ohio,
attended art school and married Eileen Schauder.

At her urging he entered a talent contest, which led to a show on a
Dayton radio station on which he would create characters and interview
them using two voices.

Winters moved to New York and with his many impressions, facial
expressions and sound effects, quickly made a reputation in the city's
stand-up comedy clubs, leading to high-profile appearances on
television variety shows.

Winters' career derailed in 1959 when he began crying on stage at a
nightclub in San Francisco. He was later taken into custody by police
who found him climbing the rigging of a sailboat, saying he was from
outer space. Wrung out from the solitude of the road and
stress of performance, Winters spent eight months in a mental facility.

Winters once admitted he felt the need to be on at all times, staying
on the set after filming was done to entertain the crew, breaking into
characters to amuse strangers on an elevator or joking with customers
in a store.

"I was the class clown," Winters told The New York Times in recalling
his high school days. "Other guys had more security, steady dates and
all that. I didn't. The only thing that kept me together was my comedy."

In 1981 Winters was cast in the sitcom "Mork and Mindy," teaming him
with Williams, an ardent admirer whose gift for off-the-wall
improvisation made him the Jonathan Winters of his generation.

Winters won an Emmy in 1991 for his work on the short-lived sitcom
"Davis Rules" and was given the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in
1999.

Recent work included providing the voice of Papa Smurf in the 2011 live
action "The Smurfs" movie, and a sequel due for release in July.

His wife Eileen, with whom he had two children, died in 2009 of breast
cancer.

Hopi masks auctioned
despite strong protests

By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services

An auction of ancient masks revered as sacred by a Native American
tribe fetched more than 750,000 euros on Friday, disappointing
prominent opponents of the sale after a French court ruled it should go
ahead.

The Hopi tribe of northeastern Arizona and supporters including the
U.S. ambassador to France and actor Robert Redford had urged the Paris
auction house to suspend the sale due to the masks' cultural and
religious significance.

But the court rejected a motion from the tribe and Survival
International, a non-government group representing its interests,
arguing that it could only intervene to protect human remains or living
beings.

The auction went ahead in front of a standing-room only crowd, raising
about 752,000 euros ($984,500) in pre-tax proceeds as collectors
snapped up dozens of lots in a sale that lasted more than two hours.

The most expensive, a crow-mother mask, went for 160,000 euros.

A buyer who acquired four masks said he was delighted to be adding to
his collection of Hopi artifacts.

"One day I might give some back,'' said the collector, who declined to
be identified. "But if it had not been for collectors in the 19th
century who contributed to the field of ethnology, there would be very
little knowledge of the Hopi."

Some disagreed. A man with Hopi origins studying in France was kicked
out of the auction room for interrupting the sale with an angry speech.
Several people trying to take photographs were also removed.

"We have lots of art that can be shared with other cultures, but not
these,'' said Bo Lomahquahu, 25. "Children aren't even supposed to see
them.''

The Neret-Minet, Tessier and Sarrou auctioneers said their collection
of masks, priced between $2,000 and $32,000 apiece, was assembled by an
amateur with assured taste' who lived in the United States for three
decades.

A spokeswoman for the auctioneers was not immediately available for
comment.

"This decision is very disappointing,'' said Pierre Servan-Schreiber,
the lawyer for Survival International, a London-based advocacy group.
"Not everything is necessarily up for sale or purchase, and we need to
be careful.''

A chorus of opponents had weighed in on the dispute, arguing the Paris
auction house should provide legal justification for selling the masks.

"To auction these would be in my opinion a sacrilege, a criminal
gesture that contains grave moral repercussions,'' Robert Redford wrote
in an open letter.

The U.S. ambassador to France, Charles Rivkin, had urged the
auctioneers to reconsider, saying in a statement late Thursday: "A
delay would allow the creators of these sacred objects the chance to
determine their possible rights.''

Rivkin, who said that the auction house had yet to provide the Hopi
Tribe with essential information about the objects, voiced his dismay
in a Twitter message.

"I am saddened to learn that the sacred Hopi cultural objects are being
put out to auction in Paris today," he wrote.

The tribe's legal advocates had sued the auctioneers at the
Drouot-Richelieu auction house in central Paris on grounds that
auctioning the masks would cause the Hopi profound hurt and distress.

Lawyer Quentin de Margerie bought mask 13, a design which mocks
tourists, on behalf of Servan-Schreiber to give to the Hopi. He said
few of the collectors understood the significance of the artifacts they
were buying.

"It's a symbolic choice,'' de Margerie said. "What the Hopi have said
about this auction is that people don't understand their culture.''

Integrated approach planned
against two diseases of kids

By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services

The World Health Organization and U.N. Children's Fund are unveiling a
new strategy to end preventable child deaths from pneumonia and
diarrhea by 2025. The agencies say this new plan of action
potentially could save the lives of up to two million young children
each year.

Pneumonia and diarrhea are two leading killers of children.
Together, they account for nearly one-third of all the deaths of
children under 5 years old in developing countries. Nearly 90
percent of the two million annual child deaths from these two diseases
occur in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Health agencies say children are dying from these preventable diseases
because effective interventions are not reaching them or are not being
provided equitably across all communities.

Elizabeth Mason, director of the World Health Organization's Department
of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health, says pneumonia and
diarrhea are currently treated separately. She says evidence from
countries such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Tanzania show it makes good
health and economic sense to tackle these diseases together.

She says many factors contribute to pneumonia or diarrhea, so no single
intervention can effectively prevent, treat or control these two
conditions. She says the new approach involves putting the known
interventions into one comprehensive, integrated package.

Vaccines against pneumonia and diarrhea are not affordable in many
developing countries. The GAVI Alliance, a public-private
partnership, provides funding that increases access to immunization in
developing countries.

To date, GAVI has helped 24 poor countries immunize 13 million children
with pneumococcal vaccines to prevent pneumonia and 13 countries with
rotavirus vaccines to immunize five million children against
diarrhea.

GAVI welcomed the integrated global action plan and says it hopes to
accelerate affordable access to these life-saving vaccines by
developing countries.

Ms. Mason said she believes the targets set by the new integrated
approach for ending preventable child deaths from pneumonia and
diarrhea by 2025 are achievable.

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Property with ocean and gulf view for sale
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be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are
permitted. Check
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Policía de Fronteras
confiscated this load of medicines from Nicaragua at the Peñas
Blancas border crossing. No one claimed ownership of the bags and a box
after police expressed an interest.Rules on rebar delayed,
and builders unhappy

By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff

The construction industry is asking the government to enact technical
regulations relating to rebar.

Rebar are the long pieces of metal that add strength to concrete
construction. The Cámara de Industrias de Costa Rica said the
government has postponed for a month issuing the regulations and that
the consumer deserves to know that the material in use is high quality.

The rebar also affords protection against earthquakes.

The regulations are under the auspices of the Ministerio de
Economía, Industria y Comercio. The regulations were worked out
since 2011 and comply with international standards, said the chamber.
They were supposed to go into effect Thursday, but the ministry issued
a delay.

Intruder stabs man
in Escazú confrontation

By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Judicial investigators said that an Escazú man suffered critical
stab wounds administered by someone who entered the victim's home.

The victim was identified by the last name of Flores. The intruder
stabbed him several times in the abdomen and then fled about 6 p.m.
Saturday, said agents.

Flores was being treated at Hospital San Juan de Dios.

China not manipulating yuan,
Treasury Department reports

By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services

The United States has determined that China is not manipulating the
value of its currency, which has been a major complaint by the Obama
administration.

The Treasury Department said in its twice yearly report to Congress
Friday that China has taken a series of steps to liberalize currency
controls and peg the value of the yuan to a more market-determined
exchange rate.

But the report also says the yuan is still significantly undervalued
and that the Chinese economy, as well as others in Asia, need a more
flexible exchange rate and transparency.

The Obama administration and many in Congress have accused China of
deliberately manipulating the value of the yuan against the U.S.
dollar. This makes U.S. goods too expensive on the world markets
compared to Chinese exports.

China has always denied currency manipulating.

The Treasury report also calls on Japan to refrain from what it calls
"competitive devaluation" of its currency.

The contents of this page and this Web site are
copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013 and may not
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